


Lactose Intolerance: A Dear Future Self Ice Cream AU

by glitterandrocketfuel



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anal Sex, Blowjobs, Enemies to Lovers, Ice Cream, Ice Cream Parlors, M/M, dear future self au, gratuitous use of ice cream metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 22:27:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21025733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterandrocketfuel/pseuds/glitterandrocketfuel
Summary: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice CreamWhen he was 8 years old, Patrick put on a cute little sailor suit and did a series of iconic, adorable commercials for an ice cream parlor. Little did he know he'd never be able to get out of it, even at twenty-seven. Pete Wentz (the Third) hates his father's ice cream legacy and has made it his life's goal to sully the Ice Cream Kid in the most debauched way possible through his performance art. Is Patrick just so used to has-been humiliation that it no longer bothers him, or has he found his soul mate in the one person who hates his past role more than he does?





	Lactose Intolerance: A Dear Future Self Ice Cream AU

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for gratuitous use of terrible confectionery metaphors, awful pranks, potential arson, and two idiots who are appallingly bad at having hate-sex but sure are willing to give it the ol' enemies-to-lovers try. And Gabe Saporta, for enabling a lot of it.

"Aaaand action!" 

Patrick accepted the cone from the extra, who presented it with a flourish. He peered down into the cone, expecting wax molded into the shape of attractively-scooped ice cream. Fuck, he hated ice cream. He schooled his features and made to pantomime taking a big lick of the ice cream. As in commercial number two, "Fall Out: Ice Cream Boy," the shaped ball of wax ice cream fell from the cone and splatted to the ground, propelled by a lever on the prop cone. 

In the original commercial, now shiny with age and the VHS technology of the era, Peter Wentz Junior, the owner of WentzWhip, appeared in a puff of smoke, dressed as an ice cream wizard (with a waffle-cone hat). He waved a wand and a new scoop of ice cream "appeared" in young Patrick's empty cone (propelled by the same lever).

Only this time, when Patrick pressed the lever in the cone for the second time and made his "delighted" face, it wasn't a wax ball of fake ice cream that popped up.

A foam rubber dildo sprang out of the cone, bonking right against Patrick's "delighted" face's nose and stunned him with the impact.

"Cut! Perfect! That's a wrap!" 

"What the absolute FUCK!" Patrick screeched, his face going furious and red.

A sprinkling of snickers rolled through the studio. Patrick stared long and hard (hur hur) at the dick head bobbing merrily out of his ice cream cone, unwilling to face the audience of his latest humiliation. _It could be worse_, he told himself. _At least they're not asking you to lick your lips and go "Mm-hmm, dee-wishous!" in that goddamn lisp you had when you were eight. Now they're just straight-up mocking you. How refreshing._

The longer he stared at it, the more he felt like just licking the damn thing because that was his life now. But then the techs and the director and the assistant director all uttered a chorus of, "Whhooooooaaas" and since he'd just been standing there frozen (like the hard-packed handmade stuff that made him "famous"), their whoas came from some other poor bastard's humiliation.

He finally lifted his head in the direction of the noise and saw the other set that had been oblique to him and blocked by the lighting shades, which had since been taken up and turned to the second set by the crew, offering Patrick a partial view to the "co-star" he hadn't met.

The guy looked familiar around the one eye he could see and in profile, but Patrick couldn't quite place him. Something about the set of his shoulders under the black t-shirt with thick white drips dotting the neckline that could almost be-- _That's just what you're seeing because of the prank_, he told himself. Or the tilt of his head under the pink soda-jerk hat with the summer-green WentzWhip logo printed on the side. He tipped his head back and Patrick found himself face-to-face across the room with something that looked a lot like lady-business the size of his whole head. 

Goddammit, one dick-joke and he's seeing the whole damn world through pervert-goggles. He glanced down at his prop cone. Compared to the size of that hat, the sad little foam dick peeking out of the cone made Patrick suddenly feel inadequate.

"Wait, that didn't look realistic enough, lemme do it again," the co-star was saying. That voice...sounded familiar, but Patrick couldn't place it. He was distracted by the tilt of the guy's head. The assistant stepped into the shot to adjust his angle and rubbed the inside of the hat near the top. 

His co-star laughed. "Little circles, dude. You need a map to find it?" Ohh, that voice was familiar! Maybe he did commercials. Maybe they'd crossed paths at an audition or something.

But Patrick lost his train of thought when the guy flicked his hair out of his eyes, held up the ice cream cone--I bet his doesn't have a dick inside it\--tilted his head back and brought the cone to his mouth. True to form, the wax ball didn't fall off--glued onto the prop cone, lucky bastard. But then the guy opened his mouth and brought the whole cone to his lips.

Well, not really. There was no way that whole scoop of wax ice cream could fit in his mouth. But he opened his mouth, stretched his lips.

Then that motherfucker started to moan. Deep from his throat, like belly-breathing exercises. His eyes fluttered to half-mast and--fuck, Patrick felt the blush not just creep up his neck, it exploded, like he was a young volcano, pushing heavy, hot blood up into his face.

And down into his dick. Ordinarily, when he was around ice cream, Patrick refused to even have a dick because so many people were just interested in that 8-year-old "dee-wishus!" Ice Cream Kid and the Ice Cream Kid did not exist below the waist.

But this guy--this _fucking_ guy, whose braying laugh echoed around the studio--was fucking _deep-throating_ a goddamn ice cream cone. And moaning like it was the best dick ever.

And Patrick went from clinically sexless to hard as a fucking rock in six seconds flat because he knew that laugh.

Motherfucker was even working his throat and--Jesus fuck, Patrick wasn't even under lights but felt a bead of sweat roll down from his temple. His suddenly nerveless fingers, holding the prop cone with its pop-goes-the-trouser-weasel, dropped to his crotch.

Suddenly, the camera swung back to him.

"Yes!" The director cried. "It's ad-libbed but it's perfect! Pete, what do you think?"

The ice-cream deep-throating bandit stopped in mid-"suck" and his half-lidded gaze slid over to Patrick. His dirty grin grew even wider. "Fuck yeah," he said throatily, sounding as wrecked as if he'd really been deep-throating an ice cream cone instead of just shoving it to the side of his head where the camera angle created an optical illusion. His eyes were fastened on Patrick's crotch area.

Patrick looked down in dread and mounting horror to see what he'd sort of expected, given his life choices in the past few hours. 

Patrick had oh-so-cleverly dropped his hands right in front of his fly to cover the real thickening erection behind his seersucker shorts (and why did they make those things so light and airy and oh-so-visible?). What he hadn't dropped at all was the prop cone, clutched in a two-fisted death grip now, complete with its turgidly bobbing penis head, which pointed like the goddamn needle on a compass to his co-star's True (frozen) North.

No, not just his co-star. That grin was going to eat through his entire face, Patrick thought, even as the guy laughed--thick and low and doing something to Patrick's insides he'd normally associate with adult-onset lactose intolerance and always would associate with a bungalow storefront in Burbank--and said, "Ice cream chub. Perfect beyond my wildest dreams."

Because he knew that name.

Patrick gasped for a breath--maybe just to hold until he asphyxiated. The director snapped fingers. "No! Keep your face just like it was. Soften the mouth. You're hungry, yes!"

He barely registered the command, but he considered himself a professional. He was burning up with humiliation, but goddamn if he didn't automatically hop-to when a director barked an order. And fuck if that son of a bitch hadn't taken his prop cone into his hands. He stared back at Patrick and lightly worked his fingers up along the sides of the cone and then dragged them through the bulbous knob of ice cream on top. If it'd been real ice cream, his hands would've come away milky and thick and sticky. But even the undisturbed wax sent sympathetic shudders through Patrick's real erection behind the ice cream one. Unconsciously, he shifted his hands so that the cone pointed up a little more.

The director crowed. "God, yes! Pete you're a goddamn genius Wentz!"

Yes, Pete. As in Pete Fucking Wentz. The Third, because the Second should be rolling over in his grave right now. Fuck me, Patrick thought.

**

Pete Wentz really was a goddamn genius. A mad genius. A certifiable genius with a long list of oedipal hang-ups and so many daddy issues he could start a magazine. But by far, the biggest result of that idea was this "art piece" entirely conceived and mostly executed by him. He was going to call it "Nostalgia" in an ironic way and the true performance art was going to be the expressions on the oh-so-nostalgic patrons' faces when they watched the short film he was already mentally cutting.

Pete Wentz was also a consummate, skilled liar. It hadn't even taken half of his bullshitting talent to lure out the semi-retired agent to the very-former-child-stars and charm Andy Hurley into locating one of his most infrequently-used clients. Pete's instincts were spot on as the prey took the bait and Hurley returned to him with an almost criminally-reasonable offer.

The fact that Ice Cream Boy had shown up punctual and professional wasn't even an issue for Pete--his kind didn't do punctual or professional because it took away too much shock value. But what they lacked in on-time and according-to-budget, they made up for in speed and sheer brute force. Pete only had time to meet the gaze of the Ice Cream Boy from across two tarps before his director yelled, "That's a wrap! Let's get this thing to editing now, people!"

Pete was relieved of the prop cone--not that he'd ever wanted to see another fucking ice cream cone ever again in his life. Let that fucking Ice Cream Boy fucking drown in it--and two A.D.s passed between him and the wide-eyed gaze that tormented him through drug-fueled hazes and sporadic, ranting therapy sessions. 

He lingered for just one second too long. Ice Cream Boy dropped the ding-dong cone and glanced down at the whole mess of props at his feet--wax ice cream, cone, and foam willy, and those all-American, pink-and-blue-and-blonde features darkened in a flash of such soul-deep rage that Pete felt his knees turn to water.

"Pete, c'mon! Editing!" Gabe, his director, waved an arm towards the booth. Meanwhile, Ice Cream Kid was being led off to the dressing rooms in the opposite direction, where they'd take that ridiculous hat off him, he'd remove those clothes that Pete fully intended to immolate as the Third Act of this performance art of the perforation of his guts, and then eat an ice cream cone topped with the toxic polyester ashes.

But his brain stuttered at "remove the clothes."

"Start without me," he called, dashing for the dressing room. He took the two A.D.s by the shoulders. "Clear the area. Nobody goes in after me."

One of the ADs held up a clear plastic bag. "I've got to bag the costume back up and return it to Corporate HQ."

"Hey," Pete said and widened his grin to its most charming intensity. "Let me take care of that. I'm practically a walking branch of HQ anyway."

"Uhh, sure." The AD handed him the bag. "Be careful with the clothes. They're part of WentzWhip history."

"So am I." The ugly part. The sidelined part. The part that didn't fucking fit the smiling "Friendly neighborhood ice cream parlor" that small-town America ate up with a spoon. The lactose-intolerant morning after of the dairy-soaked night before.

He pushed into the dressing room like a battering ram to find Ice Cream Kid already half out of the striped shirt of the costume.

_Man_. Ice Cream _Man_. Because those shoulders, that chest, that _beard_ didn't belong to a fucking kid. "Patrick Stump. WentzWhip's Ice Cream Kid."

He whirled. "What the _fuck!_" That growl didn't belong to a kid either. The flashing blue eyes bored into his. "Pete Wentz the Third," he spat, the thick and syrupy venom coating accelerating the melt of hard-pack. "WentzWhip's juvenile detention center arm. I should have guessed you were behind this gig." His hands went to his waistband. He popped the button to the shorts and the light, summery fabric slid off his hips, down his thighs, and into a puddle at his feet, leaving him only in thin boxer briefs.

Pete lost the ability to think, reason, or close his mouth all the way. "I-I need your clothes."

"Yeah, well here they are." The other man flicked one pale, strong-thewed leg in his direction and sent the shorts flying towards Pete's face with his toes.

Strong-thewed. Yeah, Pete sometimes played in words like a toddler played in finger-paints, but "strong-thewed" had never come up consciously before. It never had a reason. He caught the shorts against his face and fuck him if he didn't breathe them in, hoping to figure out if the Ice Cream Kid really did smell like sugar and cream.

All he smelled was the musty scent of faded dry-cleaning preservative chemicals.

Meanwhile the other man, completely unconcerned with his lack of clothing, shrugged out of the shirt with its adorable little naval-inspired bow and striped yoke. "Did your little prank play out right?"

"Come on, it was funny!" Pete's automatic protest was as weak as it sounded. "It's a satirical commentary on sex and capitalism."

"It was a pop-up dick joke that adds no artistic value to anything!" Pete was hit in the face with the shirt, too, only he caught a whiff of male cologne or aftershave.

All his blood rushed out of his brain and right into his crotch as the words "pop-up" and "dick" drew his eyes to the place where those things happened. Patrick's package, impressive even when snugged and at rest in the boxer briefs. Pete's tongue darted out to moisten his suddenly dry lips. "It's not supposed to be a joke," he said. He suddenly wanted to see that rage again--that fury he could sense was buried somewhere under layers of pink and blue and a cherry-sundae pout--because the twin flame burning in his own gut had found a kindred inferno.

Patrick scowled "I can't believe I wasted my time. I thought I was doing a favor for the client that gave me my first break--"

"Only break." Pete's fucking mouth could not shut itself up. "Ice Cream Kid stayed Ice Cream Kid, didn't he?" He prowled forward, the costume held out like a shield in front of him, or like a cross before a vampire--not that he'd mind Patrick's lips sucking on his neck (or other parts).

"Fuck you." Patrick's lip curled up. But beyond the expletive, he had nothing and Pete saw the truth in his eyes.

Pete tossed the bundle of costume onto the vanity and closed the gap between them. "Ice cream fucked you, as much as it did me, didn't it?" This close, the blue of Patrick's irises burned into the gold surrounding his pupils. The golden whisker-scruff glinted in the weak sunlight coming from the high window of the small, pink-painted room. "Don't you want to fuck it back?"

"Is that what the prop was?" Patrick murmured. "A 'fuck you' to WentzWhip?"

The grin crept across Pete's face without him really thinking about it. "Yeah," he muttered back. "Originally, you were supposed to lick it, but Gabe said you'd never agree to it. You have a reputation." Pete's lip curled up and turned the grin into a sneer. "You always play Ice Cream Kid with--and I quote--'as much dignity as a grown man coasting on the briefest of childhood successes can possibly muster from the dregs of what's left of his self-esteem.' And you should know that's a compliment in the business."

Pete didn't know why he kept prodding the other man. It had been years since they'd seen each other, and before that, it was a barely-acknowledged understanding of each other's presence at company picnics and franchise openings. Pete had stopped going to the franchise openings.

Patrick's eyes flashed and Pete saw that rage again. Some dark and vicious part of him reveled in it. "Yeah well I know better than to fuck up my one shot. While you, on the other hand--how many times have you been hauled into the drunk tank from the Burbank location?"

"Santa Monica," Pete retorted. "I don't get drunk in Burbank. I get drunk in Santa Monica. I get laid in Burbank." He didn't know why he said that--he didn't really know anybody who lived in Burbank, he just went there to hang out with some of Gabe's more rebellious film-friends because they did a lot of shooting at famous porn houses. Except that one time when they did more shooting up than shooting, but Pete was in a bad place then.

"It was definitely Burbank," Patrick countered. "I should know. That's where we filmed most of the commercials in the original run."

Fuck. "At least I'm not reliving my past over and over again in a stupid sailor suit!" Pete's hands were tight around the discarded costume. "Making eyes at an ice cream cone because I can't get dick without it coming out that I want dick."

"Did you come in here to gloat, to harass me, or were you looking for another prop to deep-throat for your amateur porn career?" Patrick lifted his chin with a haughty expression, but Pete was close enough to see the blush and the little beads of sweat manifesting around his temples. "Because you can't let it get out that you want dick?"

"Oh, plenty of people know how much I like dick. Doesn't seem to put them off ice cream, though." 

Patrick arched an eyebrow. "So which are you here for, then? Fake ice cream or real dick?"

The sneer slid back into a grin, this one softer. "Why not both? Maybe I want dick ice cream."

Those hot-summer-day eyes widened. Then narrowed. "Hilarious." He glanced up and around the room. "Is there a hidden camera here? Is this another scene from your 'performance art' thing?"

If Pete hadn't been 110% focused on Patrick's mouth, he would have missed the little quiver of that sinful bottom lip or the rising heat in his glance. "Didn't I demonstrate my skills adequately? Did I not melt your soft-serve while your...cone was still stiff and crispy?"

"You didn't answer my question." Patrick's eyes dipped back down to his lips and Pete knew he was closer to his objective. 

"Show me yours, I'll show you mine." Pete's own gaze went further down, over the thin undershirt covering Patrick's chest and down to his boxers. His package was no longer snugged and tucked and the boxers left little to the imagination. Pete wanted even less left to that imagination and licked his lips in anticipation.

"You son of a bitch," Patrick growled, the fury flashing in his eyes sending fire straight to Pete's dick. 

Fuck yeah, he thought. "The son of a bitch was my father. I'm just the nuts in the mix-ins. And you're the pop-my-cherry on top." He licked his lips and smirked. The prize was within his grasp.

"If you--" Patrick's hands tangled in Pete's shirt. "make one more goddamn ice cream joke," he said, and smashed his mouth against Pete's in a hurts-so-good kiss. "I will make you choke." He shoved down on Pete's shoulders.

Pete's knees, already watery at the low growl in Patrick's voice, gave out completely and he hit the floor, his face planted solid in the steamy heat of Patrick's cotton-clad crotch. His hands scrabbled at the waistband of Patrick's underwear, pulling them down until his cock bobbed free, smacking Pete's cheek in the process. Pink like strawberry ice cream, cherry-syrup red at the tip. "Finally, a flavor I can stand."

**

Ice cream had finally won and driven Patrick all the way insane. 

That was the only explanation he had for being nearly naked, underpants around his ankles and his back against a pink cinderblock wall with Pete fucking Wentz on his knees in front of him, a sinful pair of lips about to wrap around his cock.

"Finally, a flavor I can stand."

Patrick's right hand curled into a fist. The only thing that stayed his swing was the realization that Pete hadn't meant for him to hear the words. The next second, Pete opened his mouth and Patrick's dick disappeared into wet heat and his higher brain functions disappeared into God knew where.

What the fuck am I doing?

I'm getting sucked off by Pete Wentz.

He hadn't even known Pete was gay. Or maybe more like himself - not opposed to dudes and more of a "people" person. He hated to label anyone because look what the label of "Ice Cream Kid" had done to him--he wouldn't wish that fate on anyone if he could help it.

But while Pete's lips slid over the head of his cock, Patrick stopped thinking of labels and ice cream and anything but fuck fuck fuck and Pete Pete Pete.

He knew Pete was dangerous to be around. The son of the Ice Cream King, but not the heir to the crown--that seemed to be Patrick's cross to bear. He and Pete had crossed paths and crossed swords at many company picnics and franchise openings. For Patrick, a shy kid who wore his emotions on his face and his heart on his sleeve, having another boy almost his age at these things should have been an excuse for bonding. But the older, darker boy couldn't stand him from the start.

And Patrick, stupid kid that he was, didn't catch on until much later that Pete wasn't merely uninterested, but fucking hated him. By then, it didn't matter. His teenage heart had already snagged on the sharp edges of Pete's sneer and left Patrick on the sidewalk, ice cream melting over his hands.

Looking down right now, at the dusky shadows of Pete's lashes over his cheeks as they hollowed around Patrick's cock, he started to think that maybe Pete might have fucking hated him, but he wouldn't hate fucking him. 

As if sensing his thoughts, the other man glanced up at him. Patrick followed the movements of his other hand as it buried itself in the pile of seersucker sailor suit and a palpable shudder ran through him. "Are--are you jerking yourself?" he rasped.

Pete didn't answer, but his gaze turned coy and his mouth, if it were even possible, stretched just a hint wider to turn his sinful lips into a sly, full-mouthed grin. For half a second, Patrick might have caught sight of his heart, lurking at the edge, still waiting to be noticed. Pete's arm moved faster.

What the hell was wrong with him, that the thought of Pete's unrestrained cock swimming in the layers of Patrick's ridiculous costume, dragging through the pastel and cream stripes, leaving gossamer trails over the navy blue piping gave him a filthy thrill?

Patrick closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall while Pete's lips dragged over his most sensitive flesh and Pete's tongue did things that made ice cream melt and it turned out that Pete Wentz might have faked deep-throating a fake ice cream cone, but his skills were very real. Turns out I don't have a problem with a hate-fuck, either.

**

Pete wouldn't say he could taste the bitter tang of rage when it was probably just precome, but hell, he was in this to trash nostalgia and innocence. And if the scent of Patrick Stump reminded him of summer sand and saltwater taffy, that was just making a hard job blow job easier. Never mind the small moans floating down from Patrick's lips like rainbow sprinkles falling onto a freshly-scooped cone.

While one hand slipped under Patrick's waistband to cup a bare ass-cheek, the other flicked his fly open and let his raging cock free. He leaned back enough to let the costume fall to his lap where his erection poked up from his pants. A vicious satisfaction streaked through him as the dirty, dark-chocolate sound of him slurping on Patrick's dick filled the room in counterpoint with those soft, sweet, rainbow-sprinkle moans. 

The taste of hot skin filled his mouth and he worked his throat when Patrick's hips began to move. That's it. Show me what you've got. Show me all your dirty little secrets, Ice Cream Man. The rainbow sprinkles and strawberry soft-serve ain't so pretty when they're melting into the dirt, are they? His own internal monologue made him moan with the delicious defilement of it all and he grew aware that the scratchy costume fabric was rubbing against his aching dick.

He felt hands in his hair as Patrick's hips moved faster. He expected a pull but none came. Instead--instead--

Pete faltered.

Patrick's fingers carded through his hair soft like whipped cream and gentle like marshmallows. His thumb traced light over the side of Pete's cheek down to his chin in a melting rivulet down the side of a cone.

You should have known he'd be soft-serve. The little voice whispered in the back of his mind and shored up his resolve. 

I fucking hate ice cream.

Pete dug his fingers into the swell of Patrick's thighs hard--hard enough to leave bruises. He peeled back his lips and let his teeth drag the next upstroke. Above him, Patrick hissed, his fingers tightening in Pete's hair. That's it, Pete thought in triumph. He did the teeth-drag thing again, just to the edge of pain, digging his nails into Patrick's skin.

Patrick dropped his hand from Pete's hair and tapped his shoulder in urgent warning. Pete popped off his pretty pink prick and watched it pulse, his hands on his knees under the bunched fabric of the costume.

Inspiration often leads to improvisation which leads to inspired performance. Pete glanced up and met Patrick's eyes and stared hard at his old nemesis. Debauched strawberry lips, a palette of vanilla sprinkled with ginger-cinnamon over his bare skin, the cherry flush of the tip of his cock. 

"Pete--please--"

Pete licked over the head, just once, and once was all it took. Patrick dropped his head back and Pete lifted his hands up. As the first drips of Patrick's orgasm left him, Pete wrapped his dick in the fabric of the costume. "God, yes," he hissed. "Ruin it. Ruin this fucking thing."

Underneath the costume, Pete's hands were busy, because the only thing better than the former Ice Cream Kid defiling the symbol of the paragon of wholesome innocence that the stupid sailor costume represented was the former Ice Cream Kid and the heir to the legacy both sullying the false memory.

Patrick gasped as he rode out his orgasm and dropped his head down to his chest to stare at Pete. "What--?" 

His features, soft and melting a moment ago, shuttered up like candy shell. "Oh, shit!" He shoved Pete back. 

Pete tumbled back, his hands still fisting around his cock and a smirk on his face. "You too good to let me play, too?"

Patrick's eyes fixed on Pete's crotch like they were drawn there by magnets. Pete swiveled his hips a little to give Patrick a better view of the red anger of the tip of his cock poking through his fingers. "I--no--let me--but the costume--"

Pete reached out his free hand. "Come on, man." He could come just from the way Patrick stared at him, rapt and red-lipped.

Patrick licked his lips and slid down the wall, stretching his hand out. When Pete took his hand away from his cock, Patrick's fingers tangled in his and he laced his digits through Pete's before wrapping them both around Pete's aching dick.

Pete expected a dirty, resentful, half-assed jerk, but Patrick surprised him when his fingers moved up and down Pete's shaft in careful, creative strokes. "God, Pete--I--why?"

"It's a--" Pete was halfway to an answer when Patrick's teeth clamped over his bottom lip and he was done. The afterimage of that lip bursting free of his teeth like a surprise piece of ripe strawberry in the middle of a scoop and the sensation of Patrick's strong, slender fingers doing that little twist just under the head of Pete's cock sent streaks of fire wrapping around his nutsack and tightening it against his body. His head dropped back and he scrabbled for the costume, spilling onto the stiff fabric until it was damp and sticky with every hateful thing Pete had ever thought about what it stood for.

**

Patrick stared down in horror at the vintage costume he was technically financially responsible for. Thick blobs of semen were soaking through the fabric in unmistakable drips across the navy stripes. "The fuck did you do, man?"

Pete slumped back on the cold concrete floor, a blissed-out, satisfied expression on his face. "Killed a myth," he said, voice sated and lazy.

Patrick's mind refused to parse that as anything but nonsense. "But--I was responsible for that costume!" He couldn't look anyone at the WentzWhip corporate office in the eye and expect them to believe that the costume had been "soiled" in any respectable way. Doubly so because any explanation at all would evaporate like ice cream on a July sidewalk with a single word from the son of the owner of the company. And Pete Wentz the Third was not known for keeping his words to himself. "I was responsible! That costume was my--"

"Life?" Pete sprawled out further, heedless of his softening cock lolling in the open air.

Of course, Patrick was responsible. He was always responsible. Making the right choices. Making the safe choices. Agreeing to every new commercial, every franchise opening, every company picnic and never saying no, I'd like something more, please. "I--" He had no room to talk. His underwear were around his knees and his bare ass absorbed the chill from the floor and his dick was still damp with Pete's spit. 

He struggled, weak, to get his boxers up over his hips and cover himself. "That costume came from your father's personal collection." He drew his knees up and hugged them.

Pete flicked a dark, unreadable glance in his direction. "I'm sure Daddy will still love you." He made no move to cover himself, but his fingers traced slow designs in the trimmed thatch of hair between his legs and up to the bottom of the ridiculous-looking tattoo just above his groin.

Patrick pushed to his feet, not willing to be anywhere close to naked while Pete was giving him sly smirks and saying anything that involved the word, "daddy." Pete Senior may have gone on to the big sundae in the sky, but Patrick had fond memories of a nice man who was maybe a little relentlessly jovial, at least towards a young Patrick. The same man who sent him personal thank you notes every time he agreed to come out to another franchise opening (which made it twice as hard to refuse, especially when the official WentzWhip photographer insisted on getting a picture of Patrick and the franchisee "especially for Mr. Wentz's personal scrapbook").

Still weak-kneed, but determined to get away from Pete and his mockery. He stepped over Pete and reached for his own clothes, shrugging into a shirt and pulling on jeans. "And I'm sure you still hate me."

He waited until he was almost out of the room before he muttered, "I just wish I knew why."

**

Pete sat in the passenger seat of Gabe's silver Lexus with a gas can between his legs and a bagged-up ball of jizz-stained fabric in his lap. He was parked outside of the Burbank ice cream parlor he'd been wanting to set on fire since age 14. Maybe even earlier if he dug deep into his memories. It was midnight and the place was long since closed up for the night, but overhead, the sign still glowed with the giant "W" and the two humps on top designed to look like double waffle cones.

From the curb on the other side of the road, Pete scanned the deserted Burbank street. No one was out on the respectable side of the neighborhood where a WentzWhip location belonged. The pink and white striped awnings were rolled up and tucked against the building. The white, pseudo-Victorian gingerbread trim around the roof peak dripped down along the edge of the roof and repeated itself in stenciled etching on the double glass doors. 

Matching white-painted wrought iron flanked the sidewalk, fencing off the outdoor tables and chairs, sporting their own curlicued fussiness around pink and white umbrellas furled for the night under the parking lot lights. A strip of chemically green grass divided the edge of the patio dining from the sidewalk, where the scrub on the public edge next to the curb showed the real state of greenery in southern California.

"You sure you want to do this?" Gabe asked from the driver's seat. He was adjusting light levels in the hand-held digicam to adjust between the shadows of the car and the light from the sign glowing up above. "You know we can't actually set fire to the store. That's arson and not performance art and no judge in the world will believe it's therapy, either."

Pete shook his head. "It's not the store. Those are just people who need jobs." He opened the car door, letting out the gas fumes and swinging his legs out to the curb. Before he stood, he pulled a flask out of his jacket pocket and took a burning swig of its contents, letting the fire in his belly consume the new fuel.

Gabe climbed out the driver's side and they crossed the deserted road together. The ice cream parlor was on the commercial stretch of an older section of the town where the low-profile ranches and bungalows one block back rubbed backyard elbows with small storefronts and short strip malls full of service-based businesses like budget hair salons and possibly the last remaining appliance repairman in existence.

Pete stood on the walk leading up to the front door. The wrought-iron fence blocked off the outside dining area and another low gate stretched across the sidewalk, only shut when the store itself was closed. But Pete had a magnetic fob on his key ring that removed that barrier and he kicked the gate open with one foot. He even had keys to the back door of this building.

Just not the front entrance.

In the tall windows, illuminated by display lights and safety lights coming from the back of the store, the wax-models of ice cream cakes from cupcake-size to multi-tiered wedding cake sat on white and silver stands.

"That looks delicious," Gabe said, coming up beside him. 

The taller man nudged him and Pete leaned into his warmth until he felt steady enough to finger through the keys until he came up with the right one. "It's fake. Just like everything about this place." Pete scowled. "Artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial family."

"That's not what the advertising says," Gabe pointed out as he followed Pete back down the sidewalk and around the patio towards the back of the building. "All-natural, all-American, from our family to yours," he recited.

Pete's lip curled up as he popped the lock on the service entrance. The smell of ice cream and cold hit him like something palpable as he led the way through the darkened hallway to the storeroom. "Then how come my face isn't in a single one of these 'family' photos?" He grabbed a bag of marshmallows and threw it at Gabe. "For later."

Gabe caught the bag as Pete stalked past him. The stench of dairy-product lies was getting to Pete and he was two-thirds of the way to an ice cream heartache already.

Back in the alcove between the two front display windows, Pete stared at the photo collage of his father, some of the original employees of WentzWhip, and of course, the Ice Cream Boy, Patrick Fucking Stump. A cone in his hand, smiling into the camera or looking up from a sundae with his adorable strawberry-vanilla face half-covered in ice cream, bright eyes sparkling. 

_The eyes haven't changed_.

Oh sure, the rest of him grew (though not terribly much taller). The bone structure beneath those apple-cheeks had grown enough to support them, his skinny legs filled out (into "muscular thews" as Pete recalled himself thinking) and adulthood visited them both. Only the Ice Cream Kid still haunted Pete.

He wondered if maybe that same Ice Cream Kid haunted Patrick.

The picture-perfect all-American all-natural ideal that never existed. The beautiful cake made out of wax and cardboard. The same goddamn unattainable illusions that had been there since this was the only store and Pete wasn't tall enough to see the sculpted roses on the tower cake. For a long moment, he stared at the pink sugared rosebuds and licked his lips.

Beside him, Gabe let out a short bark of laughter. "Check that. Somebody else had the same idea about dick ice cream as we did." He tapped the glass. "That rosebud is a dick head if I ever saw one. You can see the slit right there, and the ridge--"

The wax had clearly softened over the time the display had been up. One of the other roses had a pair of drooping petals, and the rosebud that had captured Gabe's attention had started life perky and dewy and cylindrical. But the sun had softened it, curling the furled petals in on themselves. The angle of the original decoration had allowed the wax to go pliant and fold in midway down to create a little mushroom-cap of a ridge tilted at the perfect angle, as Gabe mimed an open mouth and turned his head. Rosebud, dick, it looked good enough to eat. 

He looked good enough to eat, all vanilla skin and strawberry-burst lips and sugary-cinnamon freckles every time Pete closed his eyes and remembered the dressing room.

"I don't know whether I'm disgusted or turned on," Pete murmured.

"Why not both?" Gabe retorted. "Since when were you too good for the gutter with the rest of us?"

For a moment, Pete did see a rosy-tipped penis. Only it came from his memory of yesterday afternoon. When Patrick pulled up his pants, eyes fixed to Pete's own cock, still enjoying the cool afternoon breeze in its own way. Patrick stepped over him, muttering about Pete hating him, and left the dressing room, Pete waited a full minute, letting the coolness of the floor seep into his heated, post-orgasm skin, then sat up and wondered what he'd just done for another four minutes. 

Only when Gabe had come squeaking into the dressing room with his Converse leaving streaks on the floor did Pete come out of himself. 

He'd bundled up the stained costume, his fingers touched a cold wet spot and he thought of ice cream, melting into dress pants that were supposed to be for Sunday church service and not for--treats like ice cream don't belong to fidgety boys who cannot sit still in the pew. His jaw set and his fingers curled hard into the costume. He rubbed a cleaner spot of the vintage fabric over the damp stain, spreading the smear onto more of the costume. Counter employees must be in proper uniformed attire at all times and present a neat and orderly appearance including hair. A WentzWhip "Ice Cream Dream-Maker" is a fresh-faced, representative of the best and brightest of the community. Peter! I told you to cut that hair and wash your face. Boys do not wear make-up. Pete shoved the fabric into his crotch one more time to clean up stray drips before stuffing it into the plastic and sealing it up, bleach-salt smell and aging fabric scent and faint hints of male and aftershave and all.

"Are we going to do this?" Gabe asked, his voice softer, less mocking.

Pete caught a glimpse of his expression in the window glass. Dark-cloud scowl and burning eyes with bags under them so big they'd have to be checked at an airport. Behind his reflection, the dick rosebud looked as if it pointed directly at his nose. Am I the dick-nose here?

He opened the bag and dumped the costume on the front stoop. "Set up the camera." He fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out the flask, taking another drink of cheap whiskey.

Gabe spent several minutes mounting the digi-cam on the tripod and hunched over it, muttering about light levels and wishing they had some. Pete stared into the window opposite the cake window, idly following the penis-rose where it pointed and saw a foam-board collage of black and white pictures celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Burbank location. There, staring down at him, the judgmental eyes of his father, wearing his seersucker "Ice Cream Man" suit with the benevolent smile and the paternal hand placed on the shoulder of the boy at his side.

The boy who was not Pete.

Pete stared hard at the gap-toothed smile of the little boy in the picture and remembered when the picture had been taken. Pete's teeth had been too big for his mouth. Stay back, Peter, you're blocking the shot. The boater hat sat on Patrick's baby-fine bowl cut. Pete's curls had been too unruly for a hat like that to stay on. Peter, stop fidgeting and stay with Miss Mary! The rest of Pete had been too unruly, too. Patrick, though, stayed still and moved exactly where and how people told him to. He said please and thank you to everyone. He looked stinkin' _adorable_ in the little sailor suit. 

The same suit the adult version of which was bunched in Pete's hands. Pete's clenched hands that wanted to rip and tear and shred and maybe punch right through that glass to the foamboard photo display.

Patrick had still said please and thank you when the agent called him about the gig. Said it every time the company called him about attending a franchise opening. Such a nice boy. Peter, you could take a cue from him. Collected the suit and returned it carefully preserved in a box from the specialty dry cleaner's. Such a good boy, sitting so still like that, so well-behaved.

Except the last time. Patrick's hips, stuttering ferociously. Breathy moans as he squirmed under Pete's mouth and hands. Pete closed his eyes and sniffed the fabric. The long hiss he let out as he started to come and the scratchy rustle of the fabric when Pete brought it up to catch it. Now the bleachy tang of come was gone, nothing more than dry, crusted stains on the fabric, but Pete's memories were still fresh. 

Gasoline drifted to his nostrils from the container at his feet and Gabe began a narrative as a test run of the video's planned voiceover. "Nothing says summer like ice cream. Nothing delights children of all ages like a delicious frozen treat when the sun is high in the sky and the days seem endless and the nights are soft. Nothing brings families together like a trip to the ice cream parlor."

Drops of gasoline fell from the nozzle of the gas can, soaking the fabric. Pete was careful to moderate--he didn't need an inferno no matter how much he really wanted to burn the whole place down. "The streets are full of diseases," he shouted and Gabe stepped out of the camera's view. "The gates are here for a reason." He toed the gas can out of the way and placed the match from the bar against the strike strip. "Ice cream and pink-faced kids love Jesus but the rest of us on the outside are treason."

He'd scrawled the words in one of his beat-up moleskines when he was under the influence of--well, any number of things. It was performance.

"I know it for a fact. I got your phone on tap. You do your talking thinking I'm not listening in the back." It was catharsis.

"Hands up." He struck the match and dropped it into the fabric on the walkway leading up to the front door, a righteous immolation of the sacrificial lamb before the house of the lord. "Ready for the boom."

The fireball singed his eyebrows and toasted his face for an instant. Beside him, Gabe whooped. "This is going to look great." He grabbed Pete's jacket. "You ready to go? We gotta clear out, man." He started packing up the camera equipment. "I'll run this to the car. Be right back."

Pete stared at the flames, barely hearing him. This was performance, this was catharsis...

This was so much bullshit.

"Pete?" Gabe shook his arm. "Pete, man, we gotta go. Somebody's going to call the cops."

Pete shook his head. "Take the gas can and head out. I'll stay here."

Gabe fidgeted. "Are you crazy, man? We're going to get caught!"

Pete shook his head. "I want to make sure it's all ash. Besides--" He shook the bag of marshmallows.

Gabe touched his arm. "Dude, this is creeping into not-performance-art territory, my brother." He leaned down and picked up the gas can. "Give me the matches and get in the fucking car, already."

Pete shook him off but handed over the box of matches. "Go. I'll stay and make sure nothing else catches fire. If anybody asks, I'm the fucking vice-president of the company." He didn't really think about the words he was saying, so mesmerized was he by the flames. What if they did catch a stray breeze and start creeping up that delicate gingerbread trim? What if they did curl loving tendrils around the photo of that sunny-smiling boy who was not his father's son and darken his fresh-faced wholesomeness with the soot of burning reality?

The wind shifted, blowing acrid smoke in his direction--ugh, the polyester in that thing stunk, what was his father thinking--and a few scraps of ash floated up in the mini bonfire of his father's vanities. One cinder floated up above his head and Pete followed it as the breeze kicked it down the sidewalk. He darted out and stomped on the cinder as soon as it landed on the scrubby grass by the curb. As he walked back to the main heap, now smoldering with a tiny flame in the center, he pulled the flask back out and took a long pull. The halos in his vision, egged on by the cheap booze, flared into lovely golden sunbeams.

He did keep an eye on the burning pile, nudging the edges into the center so the whole thing burned. Burn, Ice Cream Boy, burn. He took another drink from the flask and stared up at the collage. "Fuckin' Ice Cream Kid," he muttered.

"Hey," someone said behind him. "I thought you got drunk in Santa Monica."

**

Of all the places to take a two AM restless-legs, restless-life stroll, the commercial strip at the front of his subdivision was the worst. He really hadn't intended to buy the bungalow one street back from the ice cream parlor, but life had sort of dropped it in his lap. Plus, it was a fixer-upper, he had plenty of time on his hands, and the mortgage was reasonable enough for him to afford on his budget. But even though he restricted his walks past the place to the two AM or later block of time (because the grown-ass former child star haunting the scene of his childhood stardom was a level of creepy that surpassed even the lurking fuckery in the porny neighborhoods at the south end of the strip), he never expected to see the only person who'd look worse than him if caught skulking around a Burbank ice cream parlor in the middle of the night.

Pete whirled and stared at him, the slight sway giving away his inebriation. He grinned, wide and messy. "Wouldja look at that! Hey, everybody, it's the WentzWhip Ice Cream Kid! Mmm-mmm, deee-wishous!" Pete licked his lips and Patrick avoided looking at that mouth any more than he had to. 

"Pete, what are you doing here?" Patrick shoved his hands in his pockets, coincidentally one of which held his phone. "And what did you set on fire?"

Pete smirked, lopsided. He shuffled the toe of his shoe through the charred remains of something still on fire. "Just a little burnt offering at the shrine of the local deity. Didn't think it would work, but here you are. Grant me three wishes?"

Patrick rolled his eyes. "It doesn't work that way," he said.

"Right. That's genies. Okay, then how's about smiting someone for me?"

Patrick did kind of wish he was a god right then. Just a minor one, with only one smite in him. A zap, really. But no. "I'm off-duty for smitings, but I'll accept prayers."

"If you were church, I'd get on my knees." Pete spread his arms wide, really going for the whole religious imagery thing. His smile was all teeth.

Patrick nearly swallowed his tongue. The light in Pete's amber eyes danced in time with the flickering flame at the center of the burning pile. And was just as dangerous. "You'd burn me down." The words came out in a whisper and Pete's dangerous gaze locked onto his for a long minute, something swimming in those topaz depths. He opened his mouth but said nothing. Just tilted his head and refused to let Patrick's eyes drop from his own. Patrick felt himself sinking down, beneath the brickle-brittle words to what they were carefully chosen to obscure and tasted caramel, soft and sweet, on the back of his tongue.

Pete blinked and lifted his chin. "If you build it, they will come." He leered. "Hard, and with your name on their pretty pink lips, huh, 'Trick?" 

Patrick's face caught fire, but that was such a normal thing when he was around Pete Wentz that he just lived around it these days. He had to be hallucinating. Someone had dropped another weasel into the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and buggered up the timeline again. He stared down at the merrily crisping material in flames at Pete's feet. "That's my costume, isn't it?"

Pete reached into his jacket. "I'm just burning all the evidence of our shared debauchery. You get a fresh start with no one the wiser. Just as virginal at the next ribbon-cutting ceremony." He fumbled in a crumpled bag. "Marshmallow?" He held his hand over the burning fabric, only jerking it away when the confection became soft and gooey and stuck to his thumb. "Ow! Fuck! Here." Pete shoved his thumb against Patrick's lips. 

Hot, gooey marshmallow burnt the corner of his lip and found its way into Patrick's mouth, with the aftertaste of ash and maybe chemicals from the polyester. He tried not to think about the first time Pete's thumb had been in his mouth. That was a long time ago. He's probably forgotten. "Mmmf. Am I eating a marshmallow you roasted over the costume we both came on yesterday?"

Pete's eyes widened. "Yeah." He brought his thumb to his own lips. "Mmm...debauchery." He wiped his fingers on his jeans and reached for his belt.

Patrick sighed. "Pete, that costume was company property." His eyes widened. "Aaand now you're pissing on it. With alcohol in your system." He looked away. "Let me know if you set your dick on fire. It'll be sad because it's not a bad dick and I would have liked to get to know it better, but hey--you've obviously got a destiny planned for it that involves going down in flames so..."

"Wait--heyy now." Pete lurched into him. Pants still unbuttoned, dick still out, but peering sadly at the mess on the ground. "You like my dick?"

Do I like your dick. Pete Wentz, you goddamn stupid motherfucker. But Patrick didn't say that out loud. Because really, a two AM Viking funeral pyre for his ice-cream suit alongside a drunk bastard who'd hated him since before his balls dropped was bad enough. What was ten times worse was holding that vigil with that drunk bastard and knowing you still hadn't gotten over thinking he was the most beautiful person on earth and seventeen years of snubs and pranks and practical jokes and bitter, hateful retorts hadn't changed that one bit. "I jerked it, didn't I?"

"Well, wasn't that just being polite? Like good ice-cream boys do?" 

"Can we not talk about jerking off and ice cream boys in the same sentence? You gotta know it sounds bad, even for you." 

"I want to go back to the part where you said you liked my dick."

Pete still had the ability to freeze him, years later, and Patrick bristled. "Let's go further back to the part where you set my costume on fire and pissed on it."

"And came on it. Don't forget that," Pete replied in the most helpful tone.

"Believe me, I'll be having confusing nightmares about it for some time," Patrick retorted. "That costume was vintage. From the company vault. A piece of company history. Your family's history. Don't you care anything about that?"

Pete's expression darkened. "You," he said, fumbling at his zipper, "are not my fucking family!"

"Thank fuck for that," Patrick muttered. His attraction to Pete was inappropriate enough as it is. He shot a look at the other man and was once again struck by Pete in profile. Maybe not pretending to deep-throat a whole ice cream cone this time, but that didn't take away from the beauty of his face in profile. Neither did the frown between his eyebrows or the taut set of the corner of his mouth as he stared at the burning costume. "Pete, I was eight years old when I made those commercials." 

Pete leaned against him harder and Patrick knew he was going down sooner or later. "Yeah, and nine and ten and eleven and fourteen." 

He chose the sooner and leaned against the wrought iron fence that separated the dining patio from the sidewalk and managed a controlled crash for both of them into the narrow strip of artificially lush green grass at the fence line.

Patrick remembered his mom, loud and clear. "Be extra-good for Mr. Wentz, sweetie, and you'll be on TV!" And less loudly, "You said this would pay eight hundred, correct? His father's check didn't clear and scooping ice cream isn't paying the rent by itself."

Pete wasn't done. "And twenty-one, twenty-three, and twenty-seven." 

"And you're still salty about it at thirty." Patrick scowled. "I didn't ask for a life sentence as an overgrown eight-year-old, you know." Mom, why do I have to go to Mr. Wentz's pool party? I'm not a baby anymore and I look stupid in that costume. It doesn't even fit.

Ricky, honey, there are going to be some important people to the company there. They like their little ice cream mascot. And Mr. Wentz sent over a larger size. Maybe you and Petey can go swimming together afterward. 

The breeze changed direction and the godawful smoke blew right into Patrick's face. He squeezed his eyes shut. Afterimages flashed across his eyelids of that hot summer day of ice cream and lemonade and business suits on the manicured lawn of the Wentz "farmhouse" (a McMansion on six acres with a pool, a tennis court, and a barn that held exactly one dairy cow and Pete's younger sister's horse). Of having to wear that stupid straw boater hat and shake enough hands and pose for pictures with Mr. Wentz until he finally released him. "It was a job. A role. I was supposed to get other work from it. I have a whole portfolio around commercials and appearances for WentzWhip."

"How'd that work out for you?" The sarcasm coated Pete's tone like hard candy shell over soft-serve.

Mom, nobody else has called me. I don't think I'm the next Campbell's Soup Kid. 

Honey, please. The car payment--

"It did what it needed to do," Patrick said tightly. "At least in the short term."

"Ice cream is only good to you in the short term." Pete scrubbed a hand down his face and tucked his dick back into his pants. "Hold onto it long enough, your hands end up full of sticky mess."

"Was that the point of your little prank yesterday? Handfuls of sticky messes?" Patrick raised his eyebrow and tried not to remember other pranks at his expense. Masterminded by Pete.

Patrick, thirteen and sprung free from picture-taking with business owners and Mr. Wentz, ran towards the sounds of splashing with hope in his eyes and a little tote bag his mom packed with his swimsuit and sunscreen. Pete, just turned sixteen with a smile wide and toothy, his laugh loud and braying, his bare chest golden tanned and making a funny little flutter in Patrick's stomach that he wouldn't understand until a few years later. Now he just wanted to shed the costume that made him look like he was a hundred years old and jump in a cool swimming pool and splash with the coolest kid he knew. Pete caught him looking and Patrick lifted his hand in a little wave.

And that smile disappeared. Pete stared at him for a long moment. Smile gone, like the sun dipped behind a cloud. Eyes narrowed, assessing Patrick as if he could see through the costume, but at the same time skimming right over Patrick and only seeing Ice Cream Boy. Self-conscious and over-heated, Patrick disappeared into the cabana and rushed to change into his swim trunks and put on all the sunscreen his mom insisted on.

When he emerged, the pool was deserted. Pete was organizing a game of runners and chasers on the lawn. Pete's sister waved Patrick over and Pete looked him up and down again, seeing right through him in that way that saw everything. "Put him with the other runners," Pete said. "If he can't outrun the chasers, he can't be one of us."

Patrick never could run fast. Once Pete learned that, Patrick became his favorite target.

I'm a fucking grown-up now, thank you very much. Patrick scowled. "You owe me seven hundred bucks," he said. "For that costume. It'll cost to replace it."

"The fuck you wanna replace it for?" Pete angled his head to lean harder on Patrick's shoulder. "Don't you realize what I've just done for you?" He gestured to the smoldering remains. The glowing edges of the charred material traced little orange lines in the smoky air around the pile. "That's the whole point of this. Without the Ice Cream Kid costume, there's no Ice Cream Kid."

Patrick raised his eyebrows and looked at Pete in profile. "This is a lot more than just setting clothes on fire." 

"I'm burning it on holy ground. I'm trashing the temple and killing its god."

"You popped the cherry of the vestal virgin, too." Patrick pulled his hat--not the boater this time, but a regular ball cap, because the boater was currently a smoldering ring in the pile of merrily burning synthetic fabrics on the front walk of iconic small-town Americana--down over his eyes. "I mean, not technically, but like--"

"Ritualistically?" Pete turned to him. 

"And is that what you're trying to do here? Dark and arcane rituals to the eldritch gods of frozen dairy desserts?" He might have been running from Pete, but Pete was running from his own demons.

Pete looked down to where their thighs were touching. He hadn't let go of the side of Patrick's shirt from the time he first lurched into him. "Just wanted to exorcise a demon. I--I think I'm a little drunk. In fucking Burbank."

"But you only get drunk in Santa Monica." 

"Damn right."

It was stupid. It was two AM. He'd just toasted marshmallows with his boyhood nemesis over the hot ashes of Patrick's stillborn career and each other's jizz. "Wanna get laid in Burbank?"

**

Pete had stomped every glowing ember to nothing and Patrick made him skate his shoes in the grass strip along the sidewalk for the entire three-block walk back to Patrick's house. Every stumble, Patrick was there to catch him. And he knew exactly which way to fall because awareness of Patrick had been a part of Pete for so long that it didn't matter that they hadn't seen each other in several years.

Patrick's house was pink.

Strawberry ice cream pink. A little stucco bungalow with pink and white flowers and a lawn that was just big enough to pass out on. Pete didn't pass out on the lawn, but he did shove Patrick down on it. Okay, maybe not a move as coordinated as "shove." He tried to turn in mid-step and surprise Patrick with a mash of their lips together since he couldn't stop thinking about Patrick's lips, but he ended up tripping over his feet, getting Patrick's ankles caught in his, and taking them both down in the dry grass of the small lawn.

Patrick glared up at him. "Give me one reason I shouldn't throw you into my bathtub and turn on the shower until you're sober."

"I'm not that drunk?"

"Then what are we doing on my lawn and horizontal? I have neighbors, you know. They live really close."

Pete grinned. Something was happening in his midsection every time Patrick squirmed (beyond the obvious which--even beneath a beard, Patrick had lips that wouldn't quit). The flash of a different lawn, a bigger lawn with pink and green balloons tied to the trees shading the house and a patio full of men in pastel golf shirts and madras plaid shorts, passed behind his eyes for a moment. "Remember the last time I pinned you down on the grass?"

Patrick's eyes caught the glimmer from the little solar lights lining the walk from the driveway to the door. "You mashed a cherry popsicle into my swimming trunks and told everybody I got my period."

Pete's grin froze. The memory of that day rewound to its beginning. This is Peter the Third...got him working the counter...no, not Burbank, out at the University location...he'll learn everything about the business firsthand so when it's time--

Oh! Patrick, there you are, my boy! Look everyone, it's Patrick! And my Ice Cream Kid is in his Ice Cream Suit! Come meet the franchise board. Peter, you're dismissed. Go entertain the other young people.

Then that stupid kid, after smiling and mugging for the camera with his father, comes down the hill wearing a face as vanilla shiny as a fresh hand-dipped cone with strawberry lips peeking out. Pete had no choice but to knock it to the ground. Again and again. As many times as he could catch the younger boy. And Pete caught him every time.

Now, years later, the vicious thrill of taking Patrick down made him shiver. For entirely different reasons.

Patrick stared up at him in the light from the landscaping, his eyebrows lifted. Pete licked his lips. "My sister gave me a fat lip over that."

"Hilary gave me a pair of shorts and waited for my mom with me." Patrick bit his bottom lip. "She said you weren't a dick all the time."

Pete buried his nose in the side of Patrick's neck and breathed him in. He smelled cool and fresh and tasted of salt when Pete licked him. "She was wrong," he said. "I'm a dick all the time." Maybe he could sink into Patrick, like a hot scoop through a cold brick of hard-pack.

Patrick shoved him off and stood up, brushing grass bits off his pants before offering Pete his hand. "Inside." He tugged Pete to his feet with a shocking amount of strength for a tiny guy. Pete found himself nose to nose again with Patrick, only this time they were vertical. "You are. You are a complete dick, twenty-four seven, three sixty-five," Patrick said, all but tossing Pete onto the path that led to the front door. "And for some reason, that hasn't stopped me from wanting you."

In the humid night air, Pete experienced a brain-freeze that stopped all higher thought while his crotch caught fire. "I'll be the best hate-fuck you'll ever have." He made the promise through numb lips, surrounded by the roses and creams and gingers of Patrick and the hint of bay rum in his aftershave. Patrick held him up against the door while he fumbled his keys into the lock and the door finally popped open. They were not quiet as they stumbled together into the living room of the bungalow. "You live alone or are we gonna wake up a roommate?" Pete asked between mouthing kisses underneath Patrick's earlobe, just where the cinnamon blonde of his beard started.

Patrick's fingers dug into his hips. "Joe's on location this week. It's just me. We can be as loud as you want, within reason. I still have neighbors." He popped the button to Pete's jeans and his hand delved inside. Strong fingers found their way to Pete's dick and his knees started to melt.

"I scream, you scream. We all scream--"

Patrick crushed his mouth against his. "You finish that sentence, you'll be screaming, all right. In pain."

**

Pete Wentz, you are a complete dick, twenty-four seven, three sixty-five. And I wish to fuck that mattered to me. But it didn't. Not when the whiskey-taste of the inside of Pete's mouth (with an aftertaste of marshmallows of questionable provenance) and the whiskey-heat of Pete's eyes (with intentions of questionable provenance) daring him to make good on his threat. But who knows, maybe he's into that. Because the way Patrick was kissing him was not gentle. Pete bit his lips and Patrick bit back, thrusting with an aggressive tongue, sucking the breath out of Pete's lungs. Hate-fuck, right?

Patrick's house was small, so it took approximately half a dozen stumbling steps to get from the cream-colored walls of the living room through the door to his bedroom.

Pete stared in wonder at the deep rose walls. "You really do live inside an ice cream cone."

"I'd call it Pepto-Bismol, but who's keeping track?" Patrick shoved him hard. Pete sprawled on the bed like a starfish. "It's fucking Burbank. Every other house is either a small-time porn studio or the tragic tale of an also-ran Sweet Potato Queen from Ohio who never hit the big-time. Use your imagination and figure out which." Patrick's hands went to the buttons on his shirt. "If you really want to spend time on the history of my house. instead of a mutually satisfying hate-fuck."

Pete's eyes were dark and his grin dirty as he tore at the buttons on his jeans and kicked off his shoes at the same time. "Wreck me before I get lactose intolerance."

Patrick tried not to remember what the words "lactose intolerance" meant to him. Patrick, in high school but who hadn't grown much and could still fit the suit, so he drove himself over to the Wentz farm for a Christmas-themed photoshoot. Mr. Wentz wearing a Santa costume and Ice Cream Kid exploding with gee-whiz joy over a scoop of peppermint vanilla with real candy cane pieces embedded like red and green jewels. Or in this case, red and green bits of plastic embedded in wax. 

Patrick had nicked himself shaving and puberty chose that week to be less cooperative so Hilary, playing make-up girl, laid his base on thick, then said she'd have to darken up his lips to keep him from looking like a vampire (which Patrick was kind of disappointed about because the idea of being an Ice Cream Vampire was infinitely cooler than Ice Cream Kid).

Pete, home from college for the holidays, skulked into the great room where they were doing the photoshoot. "God, Hils. Lay off the lipstick." Pete nudged his sister out of the way and stood in front of Patrick. The collar of Pete's mint green polo shirt was popped and his hair stood up in tousled, just-got-laid spikes and all of Patrick's attention fixed on the smoky rings of Pete's eyeliner made his eyes huge and riveting. He licked his thumb and smeared it across Patrick's lips, rough enough for them to give way to his teeth. "What'll Dad say when he sees you gave his wholesome and precious Ice Cream Kid blowjob lips?"

Patrick, under assault, closed his lips around Pete's thumb before he realized what he was doing. Pete smirked down at him. Patrick was frozen, trapped with Pete's hands on either side of his head and one thumb still in Patrick's mouth. His tongue curled around the digit--totally of its own accord. Pete's smirk dropped off and he stared hard, mouth open and eyes locked on Patrick's. Patrick didn't have words--couldn't speak them anyway over his racing heart and the salt-taste of Pete's thumb in his mouth.

Hilary elbowed her brother. "Piss off, Pete! I haven't even put the lipstick on yet."

From the other room, Mr. Wentz's voice thundered out. "Is that Peter? Son, are you staying for the evening?

Pete started, jerking his thumb from Patrick's mouth. He lifted his head and his lip curled up. "Sorry, Dad. "Think I'm coming down with-- " Those hot whiskey eyes raked over Patrick, "--lactose intolerance."

Patrick had to look up what "lactose intolerance" meant later that night, and found out it meant the body couldn't tolerate dairy products. But for him it would always mean that Pete Wentz's body couldn't tolerate Patrick Stump.

In the present, Pete Wentz's body had no problem responding to Patrick Stump. He'd already squirmed out of his t-shirt when Patrick landed on top of him, continuing to bite revenge into the soft stubble of Pete's neck from where he'd left off in the hallway. Pete's body was hot underneath his, and Patrick thought he might combust with all the pent-up desire he'd been saving up for over a dozen years. "Nice ink," he murmured as he worked his way down to Pete's flat nipples and dug his teeth into one.

Pete hissed. "Is that--sarcasm?" His hands came up, tangling in Patrick's hair as Patrick licked the inked necklace of thorns.

"Maybe. This is a hate-fuck, right?" Pete tasted like the night and salt and smoke from burning polyester. "I should be wearing that thorn necklace with the way you tormented me." He worked his way down past Pete's navel to the bat heart tattoo and bit into the firm golden-tan skin there.

Pete's breath stuttered. Patrick smiled to himself as he undid the zipper on Pete's jeans and dragged them down his hips to reveal bright red skimpy underwear. "Dressed up, did you?"

Pete lifted his head to meet Patrick's eyes and shrugged. "Gabe was supposed to film me pissing on the flaming remains of the debauched Ice Cream Kid. I thought my ass'd be more photogenic in red."

"It is, but I'm not into piss-kink so you can cross that off your list," Patrick retorted. He nosed Pete's stiffening erection through the slick novelty fabric.

"Me neither. That's performance art. Ohh, you can do that again." Pete ended on a long sigh as Patrick breathed over his cock, spreading hot air through the satin.

"And is this? Performance art?" Patrick lifted his head again and yanked down Pete's underwear to free his cock.

"Would it change anything if I said yes?"

Something twisted in Patrick's insides and he remembered that Christmas party again.

Hilary mentioned that Pete was managing the University location now and had requested no fewer than four life-sized cardboard stand-ups of the Ice Cream Kid because the college students for some reason dug him. "They're so into you," she teased. 

Patrick tried to hide how much he wanted Pete to be into him by making kissy faces at her with his lipsticked lips. Just in time for Pete to come around the corner with a pair of his buddies and freeze. 

Older and smarter now, Patrick didn't expect Pete to like-like him. But he never lost the hope that maybe Pete could like him. Or at least, not be actively mean to him. "Well look what we found," he drawled. "Santa's little flavor of the month."

Patrick felt the blush crawling up his neck because now he knew all the meanings of 'flavor of the month' that had nothing to do with ice cream. But Pete's friends broke into grins. "No shit! It's him! Hey, kid, can we get a picture?"

I'm off-duty, Patrick wanted to say. But he was sitting in the Wentz's basement game room, dressed in the Ice Cream Kid togs from head to toe, and trying to hide the spiked egg nog that he and Hilary had snuck out from behind the bar. "Why not?" He ended up saying. 

He followed Pete's friends over to the opposite end of the basement where the guest bedroom was, out of sight of the other partygoers. "Just kneel down in front of the tree, we'll pose behind you," one of the boys said.

Pete pulled out his camera phone. "Yeah. Patrick, bend over a little. It's a school-spirit thing. Like a cheerleading pyramid." Patrick, bewildered, ended up on his hands and knees when one of Pete's friends jostled him. Pete began snapping pictures, his grin growing wider and infectious. Patrick couldn't help but smile back.

"God, Pete, what the hell is wrong with you?" Hilary stormed into the set-up and grabbed Patrick's hand. She pulled him to his feet and shoved his friend away. "You are so gross." Patrick hadn't understood why she was angry and Hilary just shook her head and muttered that her brother was an asshole.

When an anonymous account with a University address had forwarded the pictures to him, he wasn't even surprised to find himself not at the bottom of a "cheerleading pyramid" like Pete claimed, but on hands and knees while Pete's friends mimed fucking him doggie-style from behind. He couldn't meet his own gaze, fixed up at the camera with wide-eyed adoration made all the more authentic because he knew he'd been thinking, Finally, I made Pete smile.

Or the same anonymous account forwarded pictures of the life-size cutout of him at the University store with a hole cut where his mouth was and a rubber dick sticking out of it, or wearing a bright orange strap-on, or spattered with melted ice cream that was supposed to look like jizz all over his face.

"No," Patrick said, more to Pete's dick than to Pete himself. "This isn't the first time you've used humiliating me as 'performance art.'" He slapped a hand across Pete's chest. "Now shut up and take what I give you. This is a hate-fuck, remember?"

Pete flopped back onto the mattress. "Hate-suck my dick."

Patrick's mouth curled up and he did just that.

So it was a little bit of fantasy fulfillment for him. Pete Wentz, the handsome, confident older boy of his teenage crush years. The man in whose orbit Patrick found himself in spite of his best efforts to spin free of the world of WentzWhip. Who for some reason had chosen to humiliate him--not unexpected--and then suck his dick--completely unexpected.

Patrick knew there was something more going on under Pete's skin and behind those amber eyes, but the memories dredged up in his own mind washed over those doubts. He looked up at Pete's face (while resting his chin on his ball sack) and deliberately held his eyes while he stuck out his tongue, wide and flat, and ran it up the underside of Pete's cock. Pete's whole body shuddered and his head tipped back. "Christ, please."

Patrick proceeded to take him apart, using every trick in the book (most of them learned from a college girlfriend with a very adventurous outlook on sexuality who gave great head and even better directions to her partners and who ended up being a way better friend than girlfriend because above all, she didn't eat dairy). In minutes, he had Pete panting and squirming, fistfuls of the comforter in his hands and pretty, begging words falling from his lips. I scream you scream, you cocky bastard. He peeled his lips back from his teeth. Turnabout being fair play and all.

"Fuck, Trick, please. Christ, that mouth. Where did you--teeth!"

"Drama queen," Patrick retorted in between stiff-tongued licks around the head of Pete's cock. "It was just a little drag."

Pete panted for several breaths. "Fuck--do it again."

**

Pete was teetering dangerously close to the edge of--something. Patrick's hands, Patrick's mouth--god, that sin-lipped mouth, even with the graze of teeth--were picking him apart one atom at a time. But when he lifted his head, he met summer-sky eyes that he spent far too much time staring at with rage. Hate-fuck, remember? This is that perfect image of America's Sweetheart, at his knees for you, taking your dick like the little cockslut he is\--

He tried. Fuck, he tried. He tried to think of Patrick's mouth on him as the ultimate filth, corruption spreading from him to the perfect strawberry-vanilla richness until the sweet became sick enough to repel. He tried to encourage himself more than Patrick with words. "That's it, baby. Suck it. Take it like a champ."

Patrick lifted his head, his mouth quirked up. "That is possibly the worst dirty talk that I have ever heard. And this is Burbank. If you don't shut up," he said in a syrup-sweet voice, "I will put something in that mouth of yours to shut you up."

Long shudders rippled through Pete. "Fucking do it." He pushed up on his elbows and to his surprise, Patrick's arm shot up and he grabbed Pete by the jaw, jamming a thumb into his mouth.

Pete was thrown back a decade, to a Christmas party where he was forced to look at Ice Cream Kid in the flesh instead of a cardboard stand-up. Daddy's perfect all-American boy where Pete--the real deal, but too gold, too brown, too loud, too much\--just didn't make the cut. And those fucking blue-lake eyes looked up at him with the same adoring gaze he could no longer ignore.

He was already having problems at school. Episodes, the doctors called them, and fiddled around with prescription medications. He was having trouble concentrating in his classes, couldn't sleep at night for more than a two-hour nap. Sometimes confused his dreams with reality.

Looked at a caricature of a boy and fell fascinated with the shadows of the man beneath.

He bit Patrick's thumb. Not hard, but enough that Patrick looked up at him. Pete saw the beard, felt the beard scraping his bare thighs. "That all you got to shut me up?" he said around the thumb.

"Do you--" Patrick popped off his dick. "_Want_ to suck my dick? Because all you have to do is say so." Patrick crawled up until his face was even with Pete's.

"I said do it, didn't I?"

Patrick rolled his eyes and kicked his jeans all the way off. "You didn't say please."

"Pretty please with rainbow sprinkles and whipped cream and a cherry on top can I suck your stupid ice-cream cock?"

"If it'll shut you up." Patrick's retort was much milder than Pete's hot-fudge sarcasm. "But if you say, 'mm-mm, dee-wishous' or even think it, I will drag your naked ass back over to the ice cream shop and lock you in the freezer until the morning crew shows up. Are we clear?"

The retort had been mild, but the threat was not. "I'd have totally done it if you threatened a spanking," Pete said, pausing to bite one strawberry nipple as he worked his way down over Patrick's stomach to happy-land. Patrick was built solid and real and Pete worked his way down the younger man's broad, cinnamon-dusted chest until he reached Patrick's hips. His thighs had caught Pete's attention the other day and delivered the same jolt to his sex drive as yesterday. Pete curled his fingers around those thighs and took Patrick down in an exaggerated gulp.

Patrick's gasp echoed in his ears. Pete buried his nose in the springy thatch at the base of Patrick's cock and relaxed his throat. A moan reverberated through Patrick and Pete reveled in it. Maybe I'm the cockslut, sucking all the goodness out of him until there's nothing but an empty shell left. Knocking the frozen treat to the sidewalk and dirtying it up with gravel sprinkles so it's ruined.

"Fuck, you're good at this," Patrick murmured. "I knew you'd be so good." His fingers tangled in Pete's hair and Pete couldn't tell if the sudden shivers that traveled through him came from Patrick's touch or Patrick's voice, low and ragged.

Pete swirled his tongue around the crown of Patrick's cock. "Pull my hair," he said and bobbed back down. On the next upstroke, he licked the tip, tasting salty pre-come. "Make it hurt, I like it."

Patrick's hand tightened in his hair as he bobbed faster and wound his fingers around the base of Patrick's cock to squeeze in counterpoint. Pete waited for the burn of a pull but Patrick's nails skritched along his scalp. "So good, Pete," he said. 

Patrick did that thing again with his hand from before. "You look--God--you feel--can't wait to return the favor." He trailed light fingers down the side of Pete's face while Pete's head bobbed up and down. Cupping Pete's jaw with a soft grip while his thumb stroked Pete's cheekbone. "Gonna make you feel so good--" Warmth. Welcome. Praise.

Acceptance.

Ice cream, dropping from a cone. Spending the day with dad because he was finally old enough. Soft sweetness hitting the hard hot sidewalk and crushing disappointment. "Peter, I'm not getting you another one, those are for the customers." Frustrated father walking away. "Here," a soft voice accompanied by the shove of a cone into his hand and the short kid in the boater hat stares up at him with eager hope all over his sunshine face. "You can have mine."

Something unlocked inside Pete. 

He suddenly didn't want a hate-fuck anymore. He wanted more of that hand in his hair, wanted rainbow sprinkles falling from pink skies into strawberry softness. His arm tightened around Patrick's hip and he held his breath and tried to drown in Patrick Patrick Patrick. Patrick whose wide eyes fixed on his while Pete tried to wipe sensuality off his lips that hadn't been faked. Patrick who chased after him not to rub it in that he was the face Pete's father chose for the family legacy, but to escape it. You can have mine. Maybe to give it to its rightful owner.

For the first time, Pete felt the shame he'd been searching for...and Patrick didn't let him have it. Patrick's hand dropped to his shoulder and tapped him. "Pete, I'm gonna--"

Pete dug his fingers into Patrick's ass. This time, when he moaned it was a plea. You can have mine, he thought. He only ever wanted to share, and I could only ever take. Pete took now. Took every bit of him, relaxing the back of his throat, vocalizing in a desperate hum, unaware of the sudden tears rolling down his face.

"Pete?" Patrick's voice was hoarse. "What--Oh--hey--" He tried to pull away but Pete, cracked and melting from the inside out, tried to follow him. Patrick fell back, sweat shining on his face as he forcibly lifted Pete by the shoulders. "Hey--what's going on?"

Pete shook his head, mouth full with an agonized cry that wanted out so badly but stayed trapped in his throat. Patrick pulled him close. Pete gasped, but only a wheeze came out. Patrick's hands moved over his head, down his face, over his shoulders. Patrick's lips brushed the shell of his ear. "Hey, shhh, I got you, we can stop, Pete, I'm so sorry, I--"

"Not you." Pete shook his head violently. I'm the one who's sorry. The words were coming back but too slowly for him to get them past the barrier of his guilt. Patrick drew back far enough to see and his eyes were full of clouds, a stormy lake churning with doubt. Pete curled his fingers into Patrick's hair. "You should--you should fuck me."

"Yeah, that's not happening right now." Patrick continued to smooth his hands down Pete's sides. 

Pete's fingers dug in again. He was going to bruise Patrick's delicate, peach-pale skin, ruin it with too many teeth. "Why not? Put me in my place."

Patrick's eyes roamed over his face and Pete never felt so exposed. But then Patrick shook his head. "That's not how I roll," he said softly.

"You aren't supposed to be gentle," he said. "This is a hate-fuck, not--not absolution!"

Patrick brushed a tear away from the corner of Pete's eye and raised his eyebrow. "Yeah, well, it turns out I'm really bad at hate-fucking somebody I just want to love."

Pete wasn't in control of the part of his body that turned his head to nuzzle into Patrick's touch. He really wasn't. He didn't mean it. He couldn't mean it. "Don't say that. Please don't say that. I--I don't deserve\--"

"You're not the boss of me." Patrick's tone soothed as he continued to stroke gentle fingertips over Pete's face, through his hair, over his shoulders and down his back to his waist. "I don't think you hate me, Pete."

Pete shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "I have to hate you. It's the one good thing I have left."

"Why is that?"

"Because I don't want him to be right, okay?" The words weren't shouted but shoved out from behind his lips in a high-pressure spray of guilt. "Because you were perfect and wanted and in the front window and I was just the dirty secret in the back room, so why can't you just fuck me like that?"

**

Patrick did not think he'd be on the edge of a perfectly good orgasm with a wrecked-looking Pete Wentz in front of him, begging Patrick to fuck him for all the wrong reasons and having to turn him down for the right ones. Pete's lips were spit-slick and bitten, mouth partly open. A dusky blush stained his cheeks and upper chest. And his eyes shimmered with tears.

Patrick also did not think he'd have let slip out a truth he himself hadn't realized. But here he was, naked and still hard, raining little kisses over Pete's face in an entirely non-sexy manner. "You're not a dirty secret," he said. Pete's body started to tremble. Patrick tangled his fingers in Pete's hair and pulled Pete against him until the other man was lying half on top of him. "You've been my secret fantasy for years," he confessed. "But never a dirty one."

Pete finally stopped fighting him and wrapped his arms and legs around Patrick, buried his nose in Patrick's neck, and hung on like the roof had been ripped off the house and he was about to get sucked out into space. At a loss for how to peel Pete off the ceiling any other way, Patrick resorted to the one thing that seemed to work and kissed him again.

This time, he took his time, licking into Pete's mouth, pulling back to trace the soft seam of his lips. He sucked on Pete's lower lip, then soothed it with broad strokes of his tongue. "You're such a--you're so--you're good, Pete."

Above him, Pete moaned. "This is--" 

Patrick continued to take his time kissing up into Pete, cupping his face, stroking his thumbs along Pete's eyebrows, letting his fingers tangle in Pete's hair and rub soothing circles at the base of Pete's skull.

**

Pete leaned into every single touch.

"This is--" he began again, this time tilting his head to let Patrick access the spot under his jaw he didn't realize he needed kissed until Patrick's lips found it. "This is the worst--hate-fuck ever."

"Mmm. Good," Patrick retorted. He continued working on the spot, alternating little nips with laves of his tongue and soft pecks of his lips.

"It's--it's turning me on." Patrick did something to another spot. This one behind Pete's ear, that had him shivering and nearly floating above Patrick, except for Patrick's arms holding him down. Patrick's hands, strong-fingered and warm, pressing hot brands against a spot at his mid-spine and his tailbone. Patrick's pinky finger tickling the top of Pete's ass-crack. "Why is it turning me on?"

"Maybe--" Patrick dragged his plump bottom lip--God, that sinful blowjob lip--down to Pete's collarbone before sucking a light kiss onto the skin there, "--you're bad at hate-fucks, too."

Maybe Pete was terrible at hate-fucks and Patrick was right because those little touches and gentle flutters were going straight to his groin. Without the shame and the resentment, he almost didn't know what to do. He tried an experimental shift, rubbing against Patrick and just feeling the slide of skin instead of thinking about how he might be marring Patrick's perfection. 

Just skin on skin. Sensation without the extras. He whimpered when the shivery sensation coalesced into a white-hot arrow centered on his cock, dragging against the soft skin of Patrick's belly. He tried it again and couldn't seem to stop trying it, but felt like he should at least warn Patrick. "Patrick? Can I--'m'gonna--"

Patrick's arms tightened and his hand pressed down over Pete's ass, holding him still. "Not yet, you're not."

Pete pushed up on his elbows and peered down at Patrick, the question in his eyes if not on his lips. Patrick smiled up at him and used the hand from his back to brush Pete's cheek. Pete melted again.

"Do you trust me?"

Pete licked his lips and nodded. "Yeah. I think I do. It's me I don't trust."

"Let me make you feel good. No hate. No ice cream. No WentzWhip."

Pete's arms began to shake. He nodded, head bobbing in rapid-fire. The consent seemed to light up something in Patrick because his hands went from soothing to firm. 

He flipped Pete over onto his back and loomed above him. Instead of soft kisses, his lips turned insistent. He moved south in a repeat of the same situation that got them here in the first place, but this time, Patrick's moves were more certain. He held Pete's hips when Pete tried to move. Flicked his tongue in sharp, darting tastes of Pete's cock, only rewarding him once with a long, deep-throated suck before returning to the flicks.

"Patrick, Patrick, Patrick." Pete reached for Patrick's head because he wanted to give Patrick the same good feelings that Patrick unlocked in him. 

Instead, Patrick captured his wrists and pinned them next to his hips. "Let. Me. Make. You. Feel. Good." He rose back up to touch Pete's nose with his own, still pinning his wrists. He only let go long enough to rummage in the drawer of the bedside table. Pete heard the pop of a lube cap.

"Patrick, I want--" Pete didn't know what he wanted. He wanted Patrick, he wanted to be good, he wanted to be enough. "Fuck me, please. Pretty please with a cherry on top."

A second later, Pete felt light fluttering touches behind his balls and Patrick's lube-slick finger touching him. "You want this?" Patrick asked.

Pete nodded and arched his hips. "Yes. Please...fuck...yes."

Patrick's finger breached him and Pete sank into the stretch-burn of it. Patrick ducked his head to suck a mark into Pete's neck before lifting his head. "Gonna make this so good for you."

Pete rode his finger, moaning at the stretch when he added a second, breathless when he added a third. "Please...so ready for you," he breathed against Patrick's lips. 

He found the condom packet in the bedclothes and tore it open with his teeth. When he wrapped his fingers around Patrick to slide it on, the younger man shuddered and the strangest thrill went through Pete. I want to make him look like that every day. He had no idea how--he hadn't ever really considered himself a cause of anything besides disappointment and frustration. He only knew he'd do whatever it took.

He spread his legs wider when Patrick leaned over him. "Tell me what feels good," Patrick said. The blunt head of his cock pressed against Pete's hole.

Pete took a deep breath and held it, then nodded. Patrick moved forward and Pete felt his body give and Patrick pressed his lips against Pete's and breathed for him when he couldn't. "Yes. Yesyesyesss." Patrick held himself over Pete and Pete arched, missing the closeness already. The initial burn, incandescent, receded and left Pete with a glow that spread from his groin out to his extremities.

Patrick waited him out. Pete opened his eyes to the bearded man watching him carefully. He tried to focus, but his eyes wanted to flutter and his brain was preoccupied with keeping his body from turning all the way into light.

"You still with me, Pete? Does it hurt? Do we need more lube?"

Pete licked lips suddenly numb and ridiculously sensitive at the same time. "Just move, Trick. Feels so--" Patrick obliged and if Pete thought he was going to combust from just feeling Patrick inside him, feeling Patrick _moving_ inside him ignited the sun.

Patrick took his time, biting at Pete's lips, resting his sweaty forehead against Pete's while his hips eased back and forth in slow, measured thrusts, sending waves through Pete that, if he didn't know better, might be washing him clean. "So good, Pete...you feel...amazing."

Pete tried to reach for Patrick's head, or rake his nails down Patrick's back, anything to keep the waves coming, but Patrick pinned his wrists by his ears. "Just like this, okay?" Patrick looked down at him, his face serious. "Just enjoy it. Just trust me?"

Pete dragged in ragged breaths. "Y-yeah."

"Patrick please--" He arched up, silently asking for more.

"Right here, Pete." Patrick buried his face in Pete's neck and licked careful strokes along Pete's skin, following up with little bites and soothing, open-mouthed, sucking kisses. "Never thought...I'd get to...do this."

Patrick said the words, but Pete was the one thinking them. He wanted so badly to take Patrick's face in his hands, dig his nails into Patrick's ass, score along those thighs, mark Patrick in some small way so that he would be as changed as he was changing Pete. Pete was hollowing out from the inside, sugar and rot replaced with light and gold and when Patrick shifted, reaching his spot, something crystalline pinged from his insides and came out his mouth in a high, breathless cry. "Patrick--I need--"

"Lift your legs. Trust me." When Pete shifted his hips to wrap his legs higher around Patrick's waist, locking his ankles for good measure. Spread out like this, Pete had no choice but to take everything Patrick had to give him. 

Patrick bumped against his prostate again and stars burst behind his eyes. "Fuck!"

"Yeah. Fuck." As if that weren't enough, Patrick buried a low, devastating laugh against Pete's throat. "That's--God, you're _such_ a good boy."

Pete's whole body shook at the praise. "God, Patrick--say it--say it again, _please_."

Patrick laced his fingers through Pete's and brought both of Pete's hands up over his head, resting his own weight on his forearms while his hips pistoned faster. "So good, Pete. Want you like this...want to see you come for me, just like this."

Golden light flooded Pete, sending tremors rocketing out from behind his ribcage, spread through to the roots of his hair and behind his eyes and back down again to tighten the base of his cock. He came sudden and hot and surprising, painting himself and Patrick with opalescent ribbons with every shudder.

"Gonna come now, love. Can't hold--" Patrick's eyes rolled up and it should have been comical, but the way his mouth softened wrapped a vise tight around Pete's ribcage and squeezed, hard enough that Pete went pliant at his edges, soft enough that he couldn't, for a moment, tell where he stopped and Patrick began, like the twist nozzle on the soft-serve machine, taking two independent flavors and tying them inexorably together into one thing.

Patrick cried out into his neck, the sound rippling through him to amplify the pulsing of his cock buried inside Pete. Aftershocks chased each other around Pete's nervous system and he floated down in time to Patrick's harsh breaths over his hot skin.

After a long minute, Patrick shifted and Pete locked his ankles out of reflexive panic. "Hey--just one second," he said. "Just let me feel you a little more before you disappear, okay?"

"I'm not going anywhere but the bathroom, Pete."

Pete reluctantly released him, the air cooling the sweat on his heated skin. _Now comes the aftermath_, he thought.

**

Patrick rolled away from Pete and tried so hard to collect his thoughts as he dealt with the condom and ran the water in the sink until it was warm, then soaked a washcloth. When he returned, Pete still hadn't moved and lay on his bed, sleek and gorgeous, with one arm curled up around his head and the other cupping himself protectively. Patrick put one knee down on the mattress. "Hi," he said carefully.

Pete turned a lazy, troubled gaze to him that sharpened. "Hi." 

Patrick recognized it for the defense it was. He smoothed the warm washcloth over Pete's stomach and down between his legs. "Stay?"

Pete rolled to the side while Patrick fought the comforter out from under him and tossed the washrag aside to be dealt with later. When they were both under the covers, Pete surprised him by rolling into his arms and burying his face under Patrick's chin. "You don't," he mumbled into Patrick's neck. "You don't want to love me."

Oh. So he _did_ hear what slipped out. Patrick bit out a laugh. "When has what I want ever mattered?"

"I've been a terrible person to you." In spite of his words, Pete clung to him with a fierce force and lifted his head. "I'm bad news. The wrong one. The wrong son."

"Again," Patrick said. "You are not the boss of me. And in point of fact, you are not the wrong son, you are the only son. You always were the only son."

He felt Pete stir against him. "Why do you have to be so good?"

Patrick bit out a laugh. "I'm not, really. What value of 'good' has me dragging you home for a hate-fuck instead of throwing your ass into a taxicab and sending you home to cry it out in private?"

"You haven't hate-fucked me yet. I was awful to you and you gave me an orgasm."

"Sorrynotsorry about that," Patrick said dryly. "You don't want a hate-fuck and it turns out I can't seem to give you one. I like you, even if you hate me. Besides, I got my own orgasm out of it. More than one, if we're counting yesterday in the dressing room."

"I hated that I wanted to be you when we were kids," Pete murmured. Patrick's breath caught, but he kept silent, hanging on the moment. "And then when we were older, I hated that I just wanted you. I thought--I thought if I made it filthy I wouldn't want it so much."

"When has that worked for anybody? Half of Burbank exists because filthy things are hot." He was having the most delightful glowdown just stroking Pete's bare skin, tracing over the places where goosebumps rose and soothing them back down. "What was so bad about wanting me?"

"You were Ice Cream Kid. The perfect kid. My family's legacy. That's fucking perverted, man."

"Pete, I was never perfect. And Ice Cream Kid was a character. Fuck knows I had to learn that the hard way. Just an image."

"Just the son my father wanted instead of the one he got." Pete wriggled until he was more firmly stuck against Patrick's side. His hair tickled Patrick's nose, they were starting to sweat where they were sealed together while his other side was ice cold and Patrick wouldn't have traded it for the world.

"Christ, Pete." Patrick buried his nose in Pete's coarse hair, curling away from its carefully-straightened state after a night of, well, all sorts of filthy debauchery, and breathed in his still-smoky scent. "How'd that work out for ya?"

Pete slid his hand up Patrick's chest, through the patch of ginger hair to tweak at Patrick's nipple. Patrick felt his lower half stir to life, which was really inconvenient. "You never want that ice cream more than the second after it's fallen off the cone and onto the ground." Pete's splayed hand traveled down into the warm nest between his legs. "That moment, you'd gladly drop to your hands and knees and lick it up off the ground if you were desperate enough." He cupped questing fingers around Patrick's nuts and squeezed. "I'm desperate enough."

"And I'm thinking about you on your hands and knees, licking up ice cream off the ground and it's hot, for some reason." Patrick sighed. "Because filthy things are hot. Everything you do is hot." He thrust up into Pete's grip. "That alone should cost both of us mounds of therapy." He looked down to meet Pete's gaze for the first time. "Do you even want me and not the mascot?"

Pete lifted his head. "Why do you think I had to murder Ice Cream Kid in the first place?"

Patrick's eyebrows went up. "Daddy issues."

Pete slithered up his body until his nose was touching Patrick's. "Okay, yes. But ever since that Christmas party when I called you whorelips--"

"Blowjob lips," Patrick interjected. "You said I had blowjob lips and you stuck your thumb in my mouth."

Pete did the same thing right now. Patrick closed his blowjob lips over the pad of Pete's thumb. Pete's jaw went slack. He nodded slowly. "Blow--yeah," he murmured. "Blowjob lips. Ever since then--you were what, sixteen?"

"Seventeen," Patrick answered around Pete's thumb. He rubbed his tongue across the rough pad and closed his lips with a pop. He wouldn't say no to flipping Pete over onto his back so he could suck something better than a thumb.

"Seventeen and still sucking thumbs in a little sailor suit with an ice cream cone." Pete's lip curled up, but without heat. "You were this perfect son in my father's eyes."

"I was wearing a costume. Past its sell-by date. Past my sell-by date. But your dad--I think he felt responsible for me because my mom was single. It was a job, and Mom and I needed the extra money." 

Pete's lip curled up. "And my dad needed a more acceptable son."

"That's not--" _Patrick, son, come stand next to me for the ribbon-cutting_. "It was just a role." _Dad's not coming this weekend, is he, Mom?_

_Put on your costume, Patrick. Mr. Wentz's car will be here soon._

"Not to him." Pete drew a knee up. "Didn't you ever wonder why nobody else called you?"

_Ricky, try to remember you can put all these performances in your portfolio_. 

"He wouldn't let anyone else have his precious Ice Cream Boy. You were part of the WentzWhip 'family.'" Pete's tone dripped venom. "No one escapes that."

Patrick shook his head. "No--that doesn't--I was just--a mascot."

"He paid your way through college!" Pete lifted his head. "I had to work at the University location." 

Patrick shook his head again. "No, I got a scholarship...my mom applied for a grant..."

Pete rubbed his temple, staring into the distance. "Your mom signed an exclusivity contract. Your agent couldn't book you for any other commercials. You were never gonna get a big break."

"Andy wouldn't--" Patrick started. But Andy got a nice cut for every appearance, and they showed up in Patrick's inbox like clockwork. Patrick sighed. "Yeah, he would." Oddly enough, he should have been more upset. But he was coming to realize that Pete, in all the debauchery and acting out of parental issues, really had done him a favor by jizzing all over his costume (and then setting it on fire and pissing on it). "I think it might be time to fire Andy." He bent his head to breathe in the scent of Pete's hair. "And lay to rest the WentzWhip Ice Cream Kid once and for all."

"In a shallow, unmarked grave in the desert?" Pete pressed a kiss onto the point of Patrick's shoulder. "What will you do without the gig?" He lifted his head. "What _do_ you do when you're not the Ice Cream Kid, anyway?"

_This is it_, Patrick realized. Up to now, he had been pretty good about keeping the WentzWhip part coated in a thick, opaque layer of magic shell. Now, though? "I...write," he said. He wanted to let Pete in, even if it was to wreck his life with rainbow sprinkles and nut crunch topping. "Jingles, mostly. Theme songs for podcasts and short films. I...have a Soundcloud. It's under NervousBreakdance."

"That's...got nothing to do with ice cream," Pete murmured. "I envy you."

Patrick tilted his head up to nibble at Pete's lower lip. "He didn't replace you. You're vice-president of the company, for fuck's sake."

"I know you think that." Pete buried his nose in Patrick's neck again. "You'd be wrong, but I think--I think my sister made him."

"I think that's not true at all, because in spite of the fact that you're a thirty year old juvenile delinquent sometimes, and with a deep-seated resentment of the family business, you've still done right by it. The rest of it? Well, that's going to be between you and your dad's ghost from now on. And a qualified therapist. I can give you a recommendation. Fuck knows I did the rounds myself over Ice Cream Kid. It'll do us all good to put him to bed." 

"I had to kill him, y'see." Pete did a terrible impersonation of a mobster from a film noir. "I had to kill that kid because--" He dropped his voice back to its normal register. "I wanted to fuck--" Pete dragged air in through his teeth when Patrick flicked his tongue over the webbing between Pete's thumb and forefinger. "--you."

Patrick laughed soundlessly. "You really didn't have to. All you had to do was be nice to me. I would have followed you anywhere." He shook his head ruefully. How had the two of them gotten so stupid over ice cream? He tilted his head peered at Pete from an angle. "Can I tell you a secret?"

Pete blinked and nodded.

"Part of the reason I kept taking Ice Cream Kid jobs and accepting those invitations from your father was because it was an excuse to be around you."

Pete groaned. "That Christmas we were going to Cancun," Pete said. "I bailed at the last minute. Got a hotel room near the airport and got shit-faced on cheap whiskey. I felt so dirty. You were stuck as this kid and I wanted you the way a man wants another man. How fucked-up is that?"

"Jesus, Pete." Patrick captured Pete's hand and kissed the tip of his thumb and each of the knuckles on his fingers. "I was in a costume. It was a role."

"Every time I saw you it was that costume." Pete traced little designs on Patrick's stomach and he was starting to feel a prickling oversensitivity in his skin that was not altogether unpleasant. 

"That was the only way I could be near you." Patrick huffed. "I mean, I wasn't pining, but--"

"I hated that Ice Cream Kid for being the son my father wanted."

"I wasn't your father's son. I was his business. A--whaddyacallit--anthropomorphic representation of WentzWhip."

"An anthropomorphic representation of my family business that I was starting to get boners for. You were my father's perfect son and I wanted to be you, then I wanted to do you." Pete turned his head away. "I'm not...proud of what I did. I did some really dumbass things."

"Was one of those dumbass things sending me pictures of all the lewd ways you debauched my image in cardboard?" Patrick tested his internal temperature over the memory. The rancor wasn't there. Time and distance (and maybe some frank internal discussion in regards to coming to terms with his image) pushed him away from wanting to hold on to the resentment.

Pete ducked his head and dragged his thumb over Patrick's lip. "Maybe. I think--part of me wanted you to feel shame like I did. The other part wanted the real you to do all that shit I did to your effigy."

"Some of that shit was anatomically impossible," Patrick pointed out.

"Most of me was hoping you'd text me back a dick pic and a hookup invite."

"Well, you've seen my dick and we've hooked up and you still need therapy. What do you want now?"

Pete sat up, cross-legged, without a care for his dangling nudity, and rested his hands on his elbows while he met Patrick's eyes. He wore a sober expression. Thoughtful. To Patrick, he'd never looked more beautiful. "I've profaned your graven image, sullied you on your holy grounds, and burnt you in effigy. I don't know if I have anything left to do to you. So what can I _give_ you?"

Patrick paused. Considered. Felt the weight of what Pete was asking, and let himself sense how much it cost him to ask and how much it meant for him to finally let the ghost of Ice Cream Kid go. And Patrick? He finally gave up fighting the instinct and pushed Pete back against the pillows. "How about a chance? To be Patrick. Forget about mascots and the past and see if we can find a future."

It turned out that burning the costume "preserved for posterity" was the best thing Pete had ever done, for both himself and Patrick. When the PR department head wailed about preserving the legacy for the future, Pete handed him the tape of the "performance" in a sealed envelope marked "Dear Future Self" and glared at the young exec. "Put that in my file. I'll tell you when to bring it out."

"But what about Ice Cream Kid?"

"Ice Cream Kid is dead. Long live Ice Cream Kid."

**Author's Note:**

> Special shout-out to the discord and the pack for holding my hand through this because these boys were messed up! 
> 
> And special thanks to @Rainbowmatic-Stumpomatic over on tumblr for the delightful moodboards! Hit me up on tumblr at @glitterandrocketfuel


End file.
